Our No.1 Strategic Problem

The big problem with China is not the trade gap, although everybody thinks it is and all our politicians travel to China to negotiate about trade. That is not the right way to go about it. The real problem is the yearly enrichment of China due to the trade gap. Every year, China amasses about 450 billion $ in foreign currency, of which they spend about 80%: About 360 billion per annum, in order to increase their power in the world. Our biggest threat is not Russia, it is not North Korea, not Climate Change, it is this tsunami of unequaled Chinese wealth that is bribing, buying, grabbing in our Western World, thereby taking over power with incredible speed. The problem is not jobs that are taken away, it is not our steel mills that cannot compete, even though this a problem, sure. The main problem is the enrichment. Only 17 years ago, there was no Chinese power. Now it is huge, growing and threatening. So the only correct question is: can the enrichment be stopped? Well: YES! But only if our leaders will finally stop focusing on details instead of the main problem. Stopping the enrichment will come up against the fiercest Chinese opposition Beijing can possibly muster, because the whole global power grab by Beijing is built on that continuing enrichment. It is for that continuation that China has set up their OBOR project. The One Belt One Road initiative has been imagined and is being implemented purely to get their goods better and easier to the West and in order to remain able to override all competition to their exports. When some writers predict a war with China, if these writers mean the strong arm contest between the the US plus Europe against China that is now urgently needed, they are right. But will it be a military war? I don't think so. We can still win this contest without cannons and bombs if we do it well. 

The cause of this No.1 Strategic Problem is the 2001 error of our leaders together with the WTO of having accepted China in a free trade relation whilst these leaders totally ignored the predictable effect of China’s absolutely unique stock of 400 to 600 million cheap workers. We, now buying goods from China in absolute huge quantities, created the tsunami of power coming over us. Most people say it cannot it cannot be stopped anymore, but that is weak thinking. It can be stopped. Even though clumsily, President Trump is beginning to do the right thing.

(Note: the sequel to this message is called 'What Trump really seems to understand')